Restaurants and food service providers that provide unusual or unique foodstuffs often have a competitive advantage over business that do not otherwise distinguish themselves. Because most restaurants and food service providers cook or heat foodstuffs for consumption before they are sold or served to a customer, the ability to quickly and properly heat or cook a unique food item can be important to the success of a food service business.
As used herein, the term “pizza cone” refers to an edible cone, the interior of which is filled with pizza fillings, such as meats, cheeses and other ingredients. The cone part of a pizza cone is usually made from pizza dough, however, cones made from other types of dough can also be filled with pizza fillings or other foods.
Because of its shape, a pizza cone is particularly difficult to heat and/or cook. If a cone is place on its “side” for cooking, fillings inside the cone will spill or fall out of the cone as temperature rises. If a cone is inverted so that the open end is downward and placed on a flat surface for heating, the contents will also spill when the cone is removed from a heating surface to be turned upright. The best way to heat a filled cone is to heat the cone while it is upright, i.e., with the pointed, narrow end of the cone downward, in order to keep fillings in the cone as it the cone is heated.
A problem with heating and/or cooking edible cones is that their conical shape makes it difficult to evenly heat a cone from top to bottom. A cone is also difficult to heat around its perimeter. An oven that can uniformly heat a cone from top to bottom and uniformly heat a cone completely around its perimeter would be an improvement over the prior art.